It Was the Best of Times . . . After a long profit slide, Commerce-based 99 Cents Only stores are making out like bandits, thanks to the recession. Meanwhile, American Apparel continues to flounder, just as it faces a lawsuit from Woody Allen over AA's appropriation of Allen's image on its billboards. L.A. Business Journal, New York

Reality Check Talon Curtis returned a cashiers check for $357,960 she found on the ground. The issuing bank, Pacific Mercantile, instructed her to mail it to the recipient, but Talon managed to deliver it in person -- "I just wanted to let her know that there are honest people left in this world." Associated Press

The Gang's All Here The Sheriff's Department is claiming to have broken the back of an Antelope Valley gang known as the Lancas 13. Joining federal and state law enforcement officers, the LASD arrested 26 suspects Wednesday, in addition to 97 individuals prior to that day's sweep by 400 officers and agents. Antelope Valley Press

Jack Wrangler, 62 Gay porn icon John Robert Stillman, better known as Jack Wrangler, has died in New York of emphysema. Born in Beverly Hills into a dysfunctional Jewish-Catholic entertainment-industry family, Wrangler found his calling in 1970s porn, breaking through with Kansas City Trucking Co. In middle age the longtime Los Angeles resident married singer Margaret Whiting, a story told in the documentary Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon. L.A. Metblogs

Southland Congresspeople Bat for the C-17 Politically strange bedfellows Laura Richardson (D-Long Beach) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) are both fighting to save continued funding for the C-17 Globemaster, which Defense Secretary Robert Gates has put on his endangered-weapons list. At stake are 5,000 Boeing jobs in Long Beach, plus another 30,000 connected with a national supply network for the cargo-transport aircraft. Long Beach Press-Telegram